According to the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites were the descendants of Jacob, a patriarch who was later renamed as Israel. Due to a severe drought in Canaan, Jacob and his twelve sons fled to Egypt, where they gradually formed the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Israelites were subsequently enslaved by the Egyptians but were liberated by Moses. Under the leadership of Moses's successor, Joshua, they also conquered Canaan. After the conquest, the Israelites established a kritarchy, followed by the United Kingdom of Israel. The latter split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Modern scholars consider these narratives to be part of the Israelites' national myth[16] but believe there is a 'historical core'.[17][18][19][20] The historicity of the United Kingdom of Israel is also widely disputed.[21][22]
^ abFaust, Avraham (2023). "The Birth of Israel". In Hoyland, Robert G.; Williamson, H. G. M. (eds.). The Oxford History of the Holy Land. Oxford University Press. pp. 5–33. ISBN978-0-19-288687-3.
^Bienkowski, Piotr; Millard, Alan (2000). British Museum Dictionary of the Ancient Near East. British Museum Press. pp. 157–158. ISBN9780714111414.
^Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BCE). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture ... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period." (pp. 6–7). Smith, Mark (2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel. Eerdmans.
^Frevel, Christian. History of Ancient Israel. Atlanta, Georgia. SBL Press. 2023. p. 33. ISBN 9781628375138. "Israel developed in the land and not outside of it (in Egypt, in the desert, etc.)."
^Steiner, Richard C. (1997). "Ancient Hebrew". In Hetzron, Robert (ed.). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. pp. 145–173. ISBN978-0-415-05767-7.
^Cite error: The named reference :9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Dever, William (2001). What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know It?. Eerdmans. pp. 98–99. ISBN3-927120-37-5. After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible 'historical figures' ... archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as a fruitless pursuit.
^Faust 2015, p.476: "While there is a consensus among scholars that the Exodus did not take place in the manner described in the Bible, surprisingly most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core and that some of the highland settlers came, one way or another, from Egypt ...".
^Redmount 2001, p. 61: "A few authorities have concluded that the core events of the Exodus saga are entirely literary fabrications. But most biblical scholars still subscribe to some variation of the Documentary Hypothesis, and support the basic historicity of the biblical narrative."
^Lipschits, Oded (2014). "The history of Israel in the biblical period". In Berlin, Adele; Brettler, Marc Zvi (eds.). The Jewish Study Bible (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 2107–2119. ISBN978-0-19-997846-5. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 16 May 2022. As this essay will show, however, the premonarchic period long ago became a literary description of the mythological roots, the early beginnings of the nation and the way to describe the right of Israel on its land. The archaeological evidence also does not support the existence of a united monarchy under David and Solomon as described in the Bible, so the rubric of 'united monarchy' is best abandoned, although it remains useful for discussing how the Bible views the Israelite past. ... Although the kingdom of Judah is mentioned in some ancient inscriptions, they never suggest that it was part of a unit comprised of Israel and Judah. There are no extrabiblical indications of a united monarchy called 'Israel'.
^Adams, Hannah (1840). The history of the Jews: from the destruction of Jerusalem to the present time. Duncan and Malcolm and Wertheim. OCLC894671497.
^Brenner, Michael (2010). A short history of the Jews. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-691-14351-4. OCLC463855870.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).